Head in the Clouds (2004)

Hands up! I slept through the last 30 minutes of this pile of excrement. It might have the best ending in the history of cinema but I was not prepared to sacrifice another 30 minutes of my life to find out because the previous 300 hours (well that's what it seemed like)were excruciatingly boring. Badly acted, badly scripted rubbish. I accuse those of you who gave this film a good review of wasting more than two precious hours of my life.HOW DARE YOU.LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR YOU AND YOUR PATHETIC OPINIONS.Tenth line of text added.

From a production standpoint Head in the Clouds is impressive. Not many Canadian films this expensive get made (simply BECAUSE they are expensive) Top credit goes to the make-up, costume and art departments, as well as the cinematographer. Nothing in the frame needs an upgrade, unfortunately the script does.Head in the Clouds reminded me of two similar films which had yet to be made: Joe Wright's Atonement, and Paul Verhoeven's Black Book. These two films have something that Head in the Clouds could use...development. This feature contains a story that has nowhere essentially to go, and features characters who are insufficiently defined. When it's all over, you come to realize that Head in the Clouds is essentially a melodrama. It is glossy but generic.Too much of the story is dependant on a romance between Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron which lacks credibility and chemistry. As a lead actress, Charlize Theron is quite inept. I'm not convinced that she tried all that hard. Theron is little more than a body to go inside a bunch of pretty dresses. sometimes she actually feels like the product of a materialist 21st century. The best performance in the movie is turned in by Penelope Cruz. She is able to portray emotion better than anyone,in part because her role is also the best in the film or so it seems. All the more disappointing it becomes then, considering that One of he worst decisions Head in the Clouds makes is to drop Cruz in an abrupt/unconvincing manner after we have gotten to know her so well.Head in the Clouds has an overlong climax with a rushed ending, that sort of leaves the audience in question. I admit, I am a little disappointed in the finished project. Its beauty is equisite, but the movie is unable to generate enough emotion or intelligence to justify my recommending this as anything other than a fancy date movie for twenty-somethings (it's not a teen movie)

A young, impoverished, passionate left-wing Irish student at Cambridge University, Guy Malyon (Stuart Townsend) falls in love with a happy-go-lucky, American-born socialite Gilda Bessé (Charlize Theron). Maylon follows her to 1930s Paris, where she is a professional photographer and where she lives with a Spanish-born nurse named Mia (Penélope Cruz). Maylon and Bessé cohabitate and work together. Inflamed by the injustice of the fascist Falange in the Spanish War, Mia and Maylon leave Paris to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Maylon eventually returns to Paris; he later fights in World War II; and he constantly longs for Bessé.Somewhere, someone commented that this film could have had the tagline, "How world events can mess with your love life." That pretty much sums it up. Maylon wants to be with Bessé, but the great struggle against fascism keeps derailing their relationship. Frankly, the script is ridiculous. In fact, the whole storyline is completely overdone and melodramatic. It seems very contrived. It is as if the screenwriter wanted to tell an epic, dramatic love story against the political events of Europe 1934-1944, but this film doesn't have the heft. It's no "Dr. Zhivago." Additionally, the acting is fairly awful and over-dramatic. I can't believe that two Oscar-worthy actresses needed to act in a movie as absurd as this one. There is nothing subtle about the script that would befit their great acting talents. After seeing this film on cable television, I was so disappointed that I was moved to write the foregoing comment. I would recommend avoiding this film.

This movie is a good illustration of a passionate romance based only on intimacy. No matter whom the lovers are deep inside, their pleasure is in the flesh, whatever it is with women or men. So, when the mind and feelings come, they lose their bond and they can leave each other.With the years passing, this truth gets less powerful but in the tragic era of World War Two, every second can be decisive.I found the cast wonderful: I just like Penelope Cruz's accent and it's an evidence that Charlize Theron is a damned good actress! The scope of this love story is appealing between stern England, cool Paris and wounded Spain! As full of it, a very good surprise! (the only flaw: the Parisian neighborhood looks really like a movie set, and I don't say this just because I live in Paris!)